Black Plague - Zombicide in the Dark Ages

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Black Plague - Zombicide in the Dark Ages

Board Games – I remember when the first Zombicide game was up on Kickstarter, zombies were all the rage and Walking Dead was fresh and different, survivors based on pop icons drove the stretch goals to create an annual cash cow for CMON. As with most “sequels” the franchise eventually lost steam and rebooted in an Evil Dead 3-ish realm of mid-evil zombies and necromancers. Of course this also gave the game access to a variety of fantasy tropes that breathed new life into the franchise and wrangled in fantasy players with a refined version of the game that uses a nifty dashboard instead of the awkward “paperclip” for tracking your character.

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Christmas in October ... Kickstarters Deliver

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Random – After what seems like forever some of the Kickstarters I've backed are finally deliverying. Honestly it's pretty crazy when these massive boxes show up at the house. This has been a great week as two arrived at the same time.

First to arrive was my Bug Hunt Coridoors, this laser cut terrain replicates the station from the Aliens movie and is going to look amazing once I have time to sit down and paint it then assemble it. Looking at the sections it seems that if I build everything first I'm never going to be able to get a brush into all the nooks and crannies.

The box was massive and smells interesting, the wood doesn't quite smell like burnt wood but slightly different. Each piece is bagged with all the compaonents needed to assemble it and there is an extensive print out of how to put everything togther. For a project done by a single guy in his garage I'm really impressed with the quality and can't wait to put this together. If you haven't seen it yet Rob Hawkins did an amazing display board using these parts for Sedition Wars. I'm considering doing something similar however this project is going to have to wait until my marines are complete.

Next up Zombicide Season 2 arrived. I couldn't really pass this one up as the few games I've played with the core game have been really fun. With the Kickstarter you go a pretty decent amount of freebies for backing the expansion so I jumped in. As with the other project this was a huge box full of stuff. I like the though C'MoN put into the packaging for the shipping box. They had nice styrofoam spacers that kept everything from moving around and a nice cardboard box to hold all the Stretch goals. Little things like this show they continue to learn from each kickstarter project, and their business model of using Kickstarter as a preorder system is working for them.

Game Night Review ...

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During my regular weekday game night I had a chance to try out two very different games, Star Fluxx and Zombiecide. What follows is a short review of each.

Star Fluxx, yet another installment of the popular card game franchise. Star Fluxx has a Sci-fy skin applied to what I believe is essentially the same game as ever other version. Essentially Fluxx is a card game where almost every card played changes the rules of the game. You begin with the starter card that states "draw one, play one" from there players take turns drawing cards and playing them each of these cards played is either a rule, goal, keeper or creeper. The goals state what you must have in front of you to win, creepers prevent you from winning (unless otherwise stated by the goals), and rules change the game.

For example at one point we were drawing five cards, playing four, discarding to draw three and hand a hand size of one. The next turn we drew one, played four and three cards hand size. As you can see the name Fluxx comes from the constantly shifting goals and rules. 

The game is fun, can be very fast or drag on all night. More or less it comes down to luck. You can have all the parts you need to win in hand but only be able to play one per turn and then the rules change and you have to discard and someone plays a new goal. Overall it becomes very random as any strategy quickly gets thrown out the window because the rules change with each player. I'd play it again but don't have any desire to own it.

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Next up is Zombicide, this game was a huge hit on Kickstarter and is in the process of wrapping up its campaign for season two and some other expansion packs. I missed the boat on this the first time it came around, partially because I was skeptical of Kickstarter at the time and partially because there were several similar games being kicked at the same time and I had my doubts about which would be better. While I missed out on the extra stuff and if I want to get the cool add on figures from ebay will pay a hefty premium; I'm happy I waited. I was able to pick up the core game for $67 off amazon and there are enough components in that box to keep me busy for a good long while.

Since it was getting late we decided to just play through the tutorial (which we did twice because the first time around one player killed everyone before we got past the door). The mechanics are pretty smooth and are easy to remember after two play thoroughs. Essentially each survivor gets three actions, which allow them to search, fight etc. After all the survivors activate the zombies go using autopilot. They move towards survivors and attack if they're in the same zone. Rinse and repeat til the survivors are dead or accomplish the mission objective.

I really like this game based off the tutorial and I'm looking forward to playing through a full mission or linked campaign. If you don't already own this and like zombies or like true co-op games then you should run out and pick it up.